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Indeterminacy in Some of Shelley's Major Poems: a Critical Discussion Durham E-Theses Indeterminacy in some of Shelley's major poems: a critical discussion Magarian, Barry How to cite: Magarian, Barry (1993) Indeterminacy in some of Shelley's major poems: a critical discussion, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/5719/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk ABSTRACT BARRY MAGARIAN INDETERMINACY IN SOME OF SHELLEY'S MAJOR POEMS: A CRITICAL DISCUSSION Ph.D. 1993 This thesis examines a selection of Shelley's major poems in order to delineate the way they invite and resist interpretation. I argue that Shelley's reluctance to supply simplistic meanings is bound up with his search for truth and symptomatic of intellectual honesty. Shelley's texts call upon the reader's responses in order to bring their meanings into focus. These meanings are dynamically provisional. This method of calling upon the reader's responses is specific to Shelley and is termed 'indeterminacy'. The term is not used primarily in a deconstructive sense. 'Indeterminacy' incorporates the indeterminacy in a text, and the indeterminacy of the reader's response that is triggered by the text. The thesis has six chapters. Chapter One addresses Alastor, relating the indeterminacy with which the Poet is presented to the poem's problematic narrative methods. Chapter Two examines the enigma of the Maniac in Julian and Maddalo. The Maniac's soliloquy remains poised between illumination and opacity. This ambivalence is linked to Julian's function and the inconclusive ending. Chapter Three examines The Cenci in the light of Shelley's tendency to let the reader assume the protagonist's viewpoint. I argue that, in evaluating Beatrice, we must also evaluate ourselves. Chapter Four examines self- consciousness and bereavement in Adonais. Chapter Five concerns the lyrics to Jane Williams, concentrating on the changing psychological currents of Shelley's relationship with Jane. The relationship is examined in terms of the tension between poetic symbols and complex human personalities. Chapter Six concerns Rousseau's ambiguity in The Triumph of Life; this is related to the enigma of human endeavours and the articulation of moral dilemmas that are left unresolved. Throughout I illustrate Shelley's sense of poetry as surrogate-like in that he is continually striving to recreate the absent forms and sensations of experience and often anxious to stress the reductiveness of this attempt. INDETERMINACY IN SOME OF SHELLEY'S MAJOR POEMS: A CRITICAL DISCUSSION BARRY MAGARIAN Ph.D. UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 1993 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be pubhshed without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. Contents Abstract 1 Declaration and Statement of Copyright 5 Acknowledgements 6 Note on Texts 7 Abbreviations 8 Introduction 10 1. Alastor. The Mutability of Identity 25 2. Julian and Maddalo: Inscrutability and Suffering 53 3. The Cenci: Moral Ambivalence and Self-Knowledge 83 4. Adonais: Liberation and Destruction 108 5. The Late Lyrics: Recreating the Moment 132 6. The Triumph of Life: The Hux of Experience 167 Notes 200 Bibliography 215 This thesis is dedicated to my mother and father with love and gratitude. Declaration No part of the material offered in this thesis has previously been submitted by me for a degree in this or any other university. Statement of Copyright The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. Acknowledgements The writing of this thesis would not have been possible without the advice, guidance and support of my tutors Dr. Michael O'Neill and Dr. Pamela Clemit. I should like to thank them both very much. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my parents for their patience and great generosity. There are also a whole host of friends who have, at one time or another, been there when I needed them, urged me to complete this thesis and insisted on how bad I would feel if I didn't. In particular, I would like to thank Dougal Wilson for his detachment and practical approach, John Hutchinson for his joie de vivre, Serge Suanez for the harmony, Kathleen Koch for her voice, Karen Kassulat for not letting me get things out of proportion, Barrie Hall for his mixture of surrealism and sanity, Daniel Stocks for not letting me get things in proportion, Nicholoas Antoniu for showing me how to wordprocess with style. Grant Gordon because he is a great listener and an antidote to excess, Andy Calder for his American accents, Ian Gordon for his ironic self-effacement, John Metson because he's going through the same thing, Wilf Moss because he's suffused with warmth and has terrible taste in clothes, Bernie Zanzmer because he understood, Tom Smith for his erroneous grasp of Shakespeare and the way this grasp paid rich dividends in performance, Nicola Wearmouth for helping me get off the merry go-round, Adam Batstone for his sense of the absurd, Louise Brown because she laughed at my jokes, Jenny Reid because she liked big sticky puddings, Debbie Pratiey because she had a manner beyond courtesy, Mike Creamer because he was always in a good mood, and finally Stefan Wesiak because he believed in me. Note on Texts Quotations from and references to Shelley's poetry and prose are taken from Shelley's Poetry and Prose, A Norton Critical Edition, (eds.) Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers (New York and London: Norton, 1977). Exceptions to this are quotations from 'The Magnetic Lady to Her Patient' and 'When the Lamp is Shattered' which are taken from The Lyrics of Shelley by Judith Chemaik (London: Cleveland, 1972) and quotations from 'To the Moon', Charles The First, The Revolt of Islam, 'Prince AthanAse', Rosalind and Helen, 'Song for "Tasso"', 'A Summer Evening Churchyard' and the translations from Goethe's Faust which are taken from Shelley's Poetical Works, Oxford Standard Authors, (ed.) Thomas Hutchinson, corr. G. M. Matthews (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1971). Abbreviations Byron Poetical Works, Oxford Standard Authors, (ed.) Frederick Page, a new edition corr. by John Jump (3rd. edition; Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1970). Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Oxford Authors, (ed.) H. J. Jackson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). Cronin Richard Cronin, Shelley's Poetic Thoughts (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Press, 1981). DC Harold Bloom, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Geoffrey H. Hartman, J. Hillis Miller, Deconstruction and Criticism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979). EOS Essays on Shelley, (ed.) Miriam Allott (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1982). Julian The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Julian Edition, (ed.) Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck, 10 vols, (first pub. 1926-30; London: Ernest Benn, 1965). Keats The Complete Poems, (ed.) John Barnard (London: Penguin Books, 1973). KSR Keats-Shelley Review. Letters The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, (ed.) Frederick L. Jones, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964). MLN Modern Language Notes. NS The New Shelley: Later Twentieth-Century Views, (ed.) G. Kim Blank (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Press, 1991). O'Neill The Human Mind's Imaginings: Conflict and Achievement in Shelley's Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). PMLA F*ublications of the Modem Language Association. PP Shelley's Poetry and Prose, (eds.) Donald H. Reiman and Sharon B. Powers, A Norton Critical Edition (London and New York: Norton, 1977). PW Percy Bysshe Shelley, Poetical Works, Oxford Standard Authors, (ed.) Thomas Hutchinson, corr. G. M. Matthews (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1971). SIR Studies in Romanticism. S perry Stuart M. Sperry, Shelley's Major Verse: The Narrative and Dramatic Poetry (Harvard and Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1988). Wasserman Earl R. Wasserman, Shelley: A Critical Reading (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1971). Wordsworth Poetical Works, Oxford Standard Authors, (ed.) Thomas Hutchinson (London: Oxford University Press, 1916). Introduction In this thesis I argue that Shelley is a poet whose greamess is bound up with his reluctance to supply his works with simplified meanings. I examine a selection of poems that are all characterised by the intensity and vividness with which they recreate experience, an intensity and vividness which often gives rise to ambiguity and open-endedness. The works both suggest and withhold the possibility of definitive interpretation. Often the reader realises that elucidation cannot be derived from the text alone and must also be sought in his own responses. This method of calling upon the reader's responses leads to the recognition of indeterminacy. Indeterminacy is a response within the reader that is triggered by something within the text; it is the interaction between the two, not merely one or the other. Indeterminacy is present in and a product of Shelley's texts by virtue of the way in which they employ language. Only when the reader has been immersed in the poem's situations to a point at which he himself becomes a component part in and extension of them can he fully apprehend the verse's richness and diversity of meaning.
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